Looking back on Queen as a touring entity in America they were never really in the A-league of top concert attractions, yes they did well but never toured to sell out arenas, which in reality shows this Queen+AL tour as just as successful as Queen in there prime. Below is just some of the box office reported for The Game Tour of 1980Queen USA 'The Game' Tour 1980

July8th/9th/11th/12th 1980 - Los Angeles - 60,000 SOLD OUT

July 13th/14th - Oakland - 19,861 Not Sold Out

August 5th - Memphis - 6,200 Not Sold Out

August 10th - Houston - 10,222 Not Sold Out

August 22nd - Philadelphia - 14,117 Not Sold Out

September 14th - St Paul - 13,900 Not Sold Out

September 16th - Ames - 9,215 Not Sold Out

September 17th - St Louis - 6,667 Not Sold Out

September 20th - Detroit - 15,599 SOLD OUT

September 23rd - Glen Falls - 7,500 Not Sold Out

September 26th - Boston - 13,000 SOLD OUT

September 28th/29th/30th - New York - 50,000 Not Sold Out

So as you can see from the 17 shows reported above only 5 definately SOLD OUT, not sure about NEW YORK as the 3 dates were reported together so 2 shows might have sold out.

yes I did and I would go on to say that Europe (outside the UK and Ireland) looks very skinny I know they are taking in some other places such as Lithuania but to have none in Spain is very strange. There doesn't appear to be many ways of slotting much in either. Over and Out I'd say for this circuit.As for 'one offs' I would rather they didn't. Don't prolong the agony. Just say that's yer lot thanks and goodnight.

slightlymad1970 wrote:Looking back on Queen as a touring entity in America they were never really in the A-league of top concert attractions, yes they did well but never toured to sell out arenas, which in reality shows this Queen+AL tour as just as successful as Queen in there prime. Below is just some of the box office reported for The Game Tour of 1980Queen USA 'The Game' Tour 1980

July8th/9th/11th/12th 1980 - Los Angeles - 60,000 SOLD OUT

July 13th/14th - Oakland - 19,861 Not Sold Out

August 5th - Memphis - 6,200 Not Sold Out

August 10th - Houston - 10,222 Not Sold Out

August 22nd - Philadelphia - 14,117 Not Sold Out

September 14th - St Paul - 13,900 Not Sold Out

September 16th - Ames - 9,215 Not Sold Out

September 17th - St Louis - 6,667 Not Sold Out

September 20th - Detroit - 15,599 SOLD OUT

September 23rd - Glen Falls - 7,500 Not Sold Out

September 26th - Boston - 13,000 SOLD OUT

September 28th/29th/30th - New York - 50,000 Not Sold Out

So as you can see from the 17 shows reported above only 5 definately SOLD OUT, not sure about NEW YORK as the 3 dates were reported together so 2 shows might have sold out.

That's really interesting because the popular perception has always been QUEEN ARE MASSIVE AND THEY PLAY MASSIVE GIGS THAT SELL OUT EVERYWHERE!! . To be honest I bought that too. We would however need to know how close to sell out they were .....

I will never understand why Queen never became the huge attraction they should have in America. They never played any of the huge festivals in America and to my knowledge never headlined a stadium concert there. Queen only ever managed 2 massive tours, those being the 1st South American tour and of course The Magic Tour in 1986. The Magic Tour really was one of the first Huge Stadium Tours that took off sadly after Freddie was unable to tour, so unfortunately Queen never scaled the heights of U2, The Stones, Springsteen or Pink Floyd.

Some more USA Box Office, this time for the Hot Space Tour 1982 and as you can see Hot Space really did finish Queen in parts of America and is probably why they never toured The Works in America either. Some shows still did well but as Hot Space bombed ticket sales did as well as the Tour progressed. The support act Billy Squire was doing well in America at the time and definitely added a few ticket sales.

Yes...it's easy to see why Freddie refused to come back to America unless they had a hit album here. Sadly, that hit would never come.

A Kind of Magic was even a bigger bomb than The Works and peaked at #46 and didn't even go Gold(initially) and dropped out of the top 200 after just 13 weeks.

Absolutely spot on, AKOM had its fortune turned around slightly in America with the TV series of Highlander, the album is now a million seller in America mainly thanks to the use of Princes Of The Universe in the afore mentioned TV series. The Works has yet to achieve similar success with estimated US sales of 850,000. As a foot note The Miracle has performed worse that both these albums selling an estimated 500,000 in America. These are still not to bad sales figures but are poor compared to Europe.

Yes...it's easy to see why Freddie refused to come back to America unless they had a hit album here. Sadly, that hit would never come.

A Kind of Magic was even a bigger bomb than The Works and peaked at #46 and didn't even go Gold(initially) and dropped out of the top 200 after just 13 weeks.

Absolutely spot on, AKOM had its fortune turned around slightly in America with the TV series of Highlander, the album is now a million seller in America mainly thanks to the use of Princes Of The Universe in the afore mentioned TV series. The Works has yet to achieve similar success with estimated US sales of 850,000. As a foot note The Miracle has performed worse that both these albums selling an estimated 500,000 in America. These are still not to bad sales figures but are poor compared to Europe.

Where do you get these sales numbers and where is Innuendo at now in the States?

Where do you get these sales numbers and where is Innuendo at now in the States?

There are a few Queen fans who specialise in Queen's sales figures, two such guys on here are Edwood and Hernan. Hernan is most probably THE expert on Queen's worldwide sales, his knowledge and research is phenomenal

There is also a website called UKmix which is a fan site dedicated to record sales of every artist you can mention. On there is someone who goes by the name of MJDangerous who as you can tell by his name is a huge Michael Jackson fan, he's also one of the world's most foremost experts on record sales data. He does unbelievable break downs of numerous artist sales, currently he is working on Queen (among others) but when he publishes his Queen research it will be the most comprehensive ever published (In my opinion) The US sales are from him. Hopefully his research will confirm Queen in the Top10 biggest selling artist ever!

I was at 2 of the shows at the NEC in Birmingham and still have the grey sweatshirt. The other stuff was nasty but the programme was good. Queen would never make a lot in them days with the size of show they put on and most arenas hardly purpose built. It was £9 I recall. Lets say 11,000 seater ? that's only £300k for the 3 nights. Really not very much

Some of the shows listed Sold out, another was the combined ticket sales for two nights. Had they played a single night the show would have sold out, as it was the number of tickets sold over two nights was huge.

As for the idea that touring smaller venues wouldn't make money, wrong if you tour smaller venues the production would be smaller meaning less cost to the tour.

Live Nation were the main promoters for the tour, if it wasn't selling enough, they would have either scaled back the venue size or pulled the plug on certain dates.

Are we even sure that these figures are accurate, as has been mentioned all the selfy stick footage doesn't appear to show any gaps, big or small in the audience.